Cars, motorcycles, and other vehicles are increasingly wirelessly connected to their sourcing companies. Several goals exist for wirelessly communicating with those vehicles. Transmission of new software updates, advertising to the vehicle, and/or diagnostic information from the vehicle can comprise real-time traffic and routing information.
Over-the-air programming (OTA) or firmware OTA (FOTA) refers to various methods of distributing new software, configuring settings, and updating encryption keys to devices like cellphones, set-top boxes or secure voice communication equipment (encrypted 2-way radios). One feature of OTA is that one central location can send an update to all the users, who are unable to refuse, defeat, or alter that update, and that the update applies immediately to everyone on the channel.
In the context of the mobile content world, these can comprise over-the-air service provisioning (OTASP), over-the-air provisioning (OTAP), over-the-air parameter administration (OTAPA), or provisioning handsets with the necessary settings with which to access services such as wireless application protocols (WAP) or multimedia messaging services (MMS).
A connected car is a car that is equipped with Internet access, and usually also with a wireless area network. This allows the car to share internet access with other devices both inside as well as outside the vehicle. Often, the car is also outfitted with special technologies that tap into the internet or wireless area network (WAN) and provide additional benefits to the driver. Examples comprise: automatic notification of crashes, notification of speeding and safety alerts, weather updates, etc. Concierge features provided by automakers or apps can alert the driver of the time to leave to arrive on time from a calendar, send text message alerts to friends or business associates to alert them of arrival times, and/or help find parking or gas stations.
Connected cars have become a more dominant presence in the network. While the average lifespan of a smartphone is 21 months, a car, on the average, is scrapped after 8 or more years. Therefore, in order to allow customers to keep up with technological evolution, software updates, which can be facilitated OTA, can generate efficiencies for vehicles.
The above-described background relating to OTA updates for vehicles is merely intended to provide a contextual overview of some current issues, and is not intended to be exhaustive. Other contextual information may become further apparent upon review of the following detailed description.